Very simple mushroom barley soup

I grew up with my mother's mushroom barley soup, made with stewing beef and dried mushrooms. I've made it a few times myself, and it is definitely a wonderful soup, but it's a fair amount of work, and if I'm putting that in, I'd rather make cabbage soup or chicken soup. A few years ago, I was visiting my friend Sharon, and she served mushroom barley soup.  It was great, and I didn't believe her when she said it was super simple. But you'll see from the recipe below that it's true.  Now, because it is so simple, every time I've looked at the recipe since, I haven't made it, because it looks too simple to match my memory of how good it was.  Then yesterday, we wanted to bring dinner over to a friend who is out of commission with a leg injury, and she had suggested soup.  I was feeling out of it myself, having not had enough sleep the night before, but David volunteered to make the soup and bring it over. I picked out several recipes for him as possibilities, and he chose this one. And yes, it really is delicious! With a salad and maybe some bread, it definitely makes a nice meal.

mushroom barley souP

from Sharon Quintenz

1/2 cup raw pearled barley

7 cups stock (vegetarian, beef, chicken, or a mixture of beef & chicken)

1 heaping cup chopped onions (a little more is fine)

2 cloves minced garlic

3 T. butter

1 lb mushrooms, sliced

3-4 T. soy sauce (if Tamari, 3; if something like Kikkoman, 4))

6 T. dry sherry (you can use as few as 3 T and as much as 8 T)

fresh ground pepper

Cook barley in 1-1/2 cups stock until tender, about 25 minutes.  Add remaining stock, soy sauce, and sherry. While the barley is cooking, sauté the onions and garlic in the butter. When onions are soft, add the mushrooms. When the mushrooms are cooked down, add to the barley and stock mixture. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes on low heat. Add pepper as needed.

The soup is delicious immediately, and the flavor also improves if left in the refrigerator overnight.

Tomato season!

This recipe is from Beth Case. David and I met the Case family on our trip to Croatia in 2017. We visited them last summer at their place in Montana. They have a huge garden, and we enjoyed the fruit of it, including a delicious tomato sauce on homemade pizza. Beth has a super easy method for the sauce--you just put halved tomatoes in a deep roasting pan with garlic and fresh basil, roast for a couple of hours, and then blend. My own tomato plants are producing abundantly right now, so I turned again to this recipe. This time I added in a sliced onion and a sprinkling of the dried herbs I would use in a simmered sauce: oregano, parsley, and crushed red pepper. If you don't have fresh herbs, you can substitute a heaping teaspoon of basil and parsley. The photo above is everything in the pan, about to go into the oven. You don't need to line the pan with aluminum foil--I just did that because my roasting pan is a little crusty.  No need to stir while simmering! No messy stove top from sauce "spitting" out while simmering!

ROASTED TOMATO SAUCE

adapted from a recipe by Beth Case

makes enough for about 8 servings of pasta

Use a roasting pan that is deep, not shallow, so that the sauce doesn't overflow, and that you can take the pan out of the oven without it spilling over the sides. My pan is about 1-3/4" deep.

How many tomatoes to use? One batch of mine weighed in at 5-1/4 lbs, but the exact amount isn't important, so long as it's enough to cover the bottom of the pan. If you have extra tomatoes beyond that, it's fine to put a few more on top. 

No need to peel the tomatoes--once the cooked sauce has been blended, there is no trace of the skins.

fresh, unpeeled, tomatoes, enough to fill a roasting pan, stem end cut out, and tomatoes cut into halves  (or thirds or quarters if tomatoes are very large). 

a handful of fresh basil (or a heaping t. of dried if you don't have fresh)

a handful of fresh parsley (or a heating t. of dried)

a few cloves of garlic, cut in half

1 t. dried oregano

1/4 t. crushed red pepper

1 sliced onion (optional)

1 6-oz can of tomato paste

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2) Put the onion, garlic, herbs, and spices on the bottom of the roasting pan. (In the photo above, you see all this on top of the tomatoes. The basil dried out in the roasting, though, so next time I'll put all this on the bottom.)

3) Put the tomatoes on top.  Roast for one hour. Add the tomato paste to the sauce--drop spoonfuls around the pan and then stir a bit to blend in.  Roast for another hour.

4) Transfer sauce to a large bowl or pot and blend with an immersion blender.  Add water to get to your desired consistency.